Foster the [REDACTED]

There’s a long history of upbeat sounding rock songs that contain dark lyrical messages. Up-and-coming L.A. rockers Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks” is no exception. Frontman Mark Foster told radio station KROQ that he wrote the lyrics of the song in the hopes of bringing awareness of the topic of gun violence among young people to a wider audience. MTVU has apparently decided to modify that message for their college-targeted channel. Richard Huff, TV reporter for the New York Daily Newsrecently wrote of watching the video with his daughter on the video music channel on to find the words “gun” and “bullet” digitally removed.

Censorship sucks and is almost always unnecessary. It just gets more attention for the alleged “offense”. This is a great song. Just like Cake’s “Sick of You”, the lyrics are dark but the song is dominated by a simple, yet funky, driving bass line which is delicious ear candy.